1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an automatic steering apparatus for a vehicle, to automatically park the vehicle without a driver's steering operation.
2. Description of the Prior Art
An automatic steering apparatus is known which utilizes an actuator of a known electrically powered steering apparatus, and is adapted to automatically carry out the back parking and longitudinal parking of a vehicle by controlling the actuator on the basis of the relation between the distance of movement of the vehicle and the steering angle which are stored in advance. Such an apparatus is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 3-74256 and 4-55168.
An automatic steering apparatus, which is used when a vehicle is put into a garage and is adapted to predict the travel path of the vehicle on the basis of the output from a steering wheel angle sensor, to detect the distance between the vehicle and an obstacle on the basis of the output from a distance sensor provided on a corner portion of the vehicle, to show a travel path of the vehicle and the position of an obstacle on a display, and to give the driver an alarm when the distance between the vehicle and the obstacle is less than a predetermined amount, is already known from Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 62-278477.
In the apparatus of the type disclosed in the above-mentioned Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 3-74256 and 4-55168, a vehicle moves from a starting position to a parking position through a locus of movement stored in advance. Therefore, when the starting position is not the stored position, or when an obstacle exists on the locus of movement of the vehicle, the automatic parking control operation cannot be continued due to the interference of the obstacle with the vehicle. Even when the automatic parking control operation can be resumed by only slightly correcting the starting position and locus of movement, it is necessary in the conventional apparatuses to restart the automatic parking control operation from the beginning or to stop the automatic parking control operation, whereby the function of the apparatus cannot be fully utilized in some cases.
The apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 62-278477 mentioned above is applied to the parking of a vehicle by the driver's voluntary steering operation, and not to automatic parking control operation. Moreover, this apparatus is adapted to only caution the driver on the basis of the distance between the vehicle and an obstacle, and does not judge whether the vehicle can be parked or not.